but I
don't want to be a saint, and pass the time. He doesn't mind making
people unhappy, because the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll
be. But I can't bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy. I wonder
if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is? I
admire her! Oh! I admire her! She's not doing it because she thinks it
good for her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy. She
must love him very much. Poor Leila! And she's done it all by herself,
of her own accord.' It was like what George said of the soldiers; they
didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been told to
be, or because they believed in a future life. They just had to be, from
inside somewhere, to save others. 'And they love life as much as I do,'
she thought. 'What a beast it makes one feel!' Those needles!
Resistance--acquiescence? Both perhaps. The oldest lady in the world,
with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in, had lived her
life, and knew it. How dreadful to live on when you were of no more
interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and die. But how much
more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were strong, and life and love
were yours for the taking! 'I shan't answer Daddy,' she thought.

II

The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
air-raids. Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
'Allow. There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs,
prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste, but
did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not known here?
Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let this month go
by? An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose
needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane. 'She
may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
approaching her, he said:

"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."

The old lady bridled over her spectacles.

"It passes the time," she said.

"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am